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"It is in
US` interest to have nuke coop with India"
Friday, May 02, 2008
Admitting that the US sanctions imposed on India in 1998
did not deter the country from continuing with its atomic
programme, a nuclear expert has told the Senate that it is in
the interests of Washington to have nuclear cooperation with
New Delhi.
Siegfried Hecker, the co-director for the Center for
International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University,
told a Senate Sub-committee on Appropriations dealing with
energy that "India does not view itself as a proliferator but
as a legitimate nuclear weapons state."
"I don`t think our sanctions have particularly stopped its
(India) nuclear weapons programme. What our sanctions have
done is slow down their nuclear energy programmes," he said.
"In turn, they have made the Indians actually significantly
more capable in nuclear energy technology to where today it
may actually -- and I believe be much in our benefit to have
nuclear cooperation for nuclear energy with India," Hecker
told the Senate. "One has to do this trade off in India and
make the decision as to whether the risks are worth the
benefits," he said.
"Their reward for refraining from nuclear testing is that they
were now caught outside of the nuclear proliferation regime.
They view that as having been discriminatory from the word go.
They will never then abide to it. They will never get rid of
the nuclear weapons they have now until there is global
disarmament," the Stanford expert said.
Hecker was asked by panel chairman Byron Dorgan that "... Why
would India and other countries not take as a lesson from this
that if they just say we`re not interested in the
non-proliferation treaty, we don`t have any intention of being
part of this international agreement, and if we just wait long
enough, you`ll come to us, there`ll not only be no penalty for
it, you`ll be rewarded for it."
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